Saturday, July 25, 2015

Did Hillary Clinton lie when she said that her private emails contained NO Classified information or when she quibbled that the information was not classified at the time she sent it? Don’t take my word for it but just read the statement signed
and released on 24 July 2015 by the Inspectors General (IGs) of both the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Department of State (DoS) to see what they say in their own
words.In essence, both IGs have called Hillary a
LIAR and
contradict her accretion that she had “followed appropriate practices in
dealing with classified materials.” Also, both IGs state
unequivocally that Hillary’s “emails contained classified information when they
were generated…” and “This classified information should never have been
transmitted via an unclassified system.”
Note the IGs say the INFORMATION WAS CLASSIFIED WHEN THE EMAILS WERE
GENERATED – NOT later classified after the fact!
In my previous Blog article I
highlighted how the Washington Post Fact checker had already discredited
Hillary’s declaration that “Everything I Did on Email Was Permitted” (http://old-soldier-colonel.blogspot.com/2015/07/hillary-clinton-cheated-out-of-4th.html).Then on 11 August, the ODNI IG informed Congress that at least two of Hillary's emails he reviewed were TOP SECRET and contained information that, the unauthorized
disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave
damage to the national security. The question for
the American public is: can a person that handles the Nation’s most sensitive
classified information in such a cavalier fashion be trusted to run the entire
Government?

On Friday/24 July, the same day that the IGs released their
public statement, the Justice Department issued their own statement that they had
received a “referral” by the ODNI IG of the potential compromise of classified
information in connection with the private e-mail account that Hillary Rodham
Clinton used while she was the secretary of state.

You’ll notice that in the above statement signed by both I. Charles
McCullough III, The ODNI IG, and Steve A. Linick, the State Department’s IG,
they found four (4) Classified emails in the “limited sample” of just 40
emails they reviewed so were required by Federal Law to make a referral to they
FBI.Extrapolating using simple math
would mean that Ten Per Cent (10%) of Hillary’s emails contained classified
information so it's expected that thousands of her messages contain information at the SECRET or TOP SECRET.

Executive
Order (EO) 12356, The U.S. Classification of Information System, defines the three
classification levels:

(1)
"Top Secret" shall be applied to information, the unauthorized
disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave
damage to the national security.

(2) "Secret" shall be applied to information, the
unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause serious
damage to the national security.

(3) "Confidential" shall be applied to
information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected
to cause damage to the national security.

Hence, as a minimum thousands of her emails sent and
maintained on her personal server in the basement of her unsecured residence in
New York and
transmitted in the clear over the public internet contained information that “could
be expected to cause EXCEPTIONALLY GRAVE DAMAGE to the national security.”

When Hillary stated at her 10 March 2015 New York City Press Conference that: "I
Did Not Email Any Classified Material To Anyone On My Email. There Is No
Classified Material." she was once again lying through her teeth but I
do believe her when she went on to say that: “So I'm certainly well-aware of
the classification requirements ….” If you take her at her word that she was
“aware of the classification requirements” than the logical conclusion can only
be that she felt they did not apply to her when she sent those thousands of
emails that contained classified information “which reasonably could be
expected to cause EXCEPTIONALLY GRAVE DAMAGE to the national security.”

Worse yet, that classified information “which reasonably
could be expected to cause EXCEPTIONALLY GRAVE DAMAGE to the national security” may “still exist
on at least one private server and thumb drive that are not in the government’s
possession,” according to the 24 July statement issued by both IGs.Clinton’s
private server and the thumb drive containing 30,000 e-mails she turned over to
the State Department were still in the possession of her attorney, David Kendall, at the time of the IGs statement and were only turned over to the FBI on 11 August.

One thing
that Hillary did get right was who she selected when she “lawyered-up” to avoid
jail time for her compromise of classified information.Remember David Kendall is the same attorney
that represented GEN David Petraeus in his legal proceedings concerning his
unauthorized release of classified information.Even though Petraeus released the information to his biographer/mistress
who possessed a Top Secret security clearance, she did not have a “need to
know” nor was she acting in her capacity as a reserve Army Military Intelligence officer. The information which was not properly marked or identified as classified was contained in handwritten notebooksand none of the information made it into the public domain but the
release to her was still a security breach for which he was punished.Although the Obama Administration has been
really tough on criminals convicted of disclosing classified information, the
General was sentenced to just two (2) years probation and a $100,000 fine.

Hillary’s
breach was far more serious and damaging in that Intelligence Community professionals are
confident that the Chinese and Russian government cyber professionals
thoroughly compromised Hillary's home-grown server in the basement of her New York house. They are
also confident that at least three other governments successfully hacker her.
Not only was her "clintonemail.com" domain name a little obvious but they were
also tracking many of her key subordinates that also exclusively used their
clintonemail.com accounts to communicated with her through her private server. Also, the information was
transmitted in the clear over the internet and she gave the information to
some people who had NO clearances at all such as Sidney Blumebthal. Although Hillary’s breach was far more serious, using the same Obama
Administration’s lenient treatment for his appointed minions one would expect
her to get off with just a fine and probation but no jail time at worst.

(Maybe
Congress should subpoena the Chinese and Russian intelligence agencies for
Hillary’s emails including the 30,000 missing ones? This might even reveal what
the ones she turned over actually contained before she edited them to remove
anything embarrassing or criminal!)

Although Hillary suffers from “Clinton Syndrome” (The
psychological disorder rendering the sufferer incapable of being truthful) she appears to be invoking the
“I was too stupid to know the information was classified” defense. It's novel but
rarely works, especially for someone who believes she's smart enough to be President. One thing for certain, her favorability and trustworthiness
ratings have plummeted since this controversy began last April and one can only imagine how
the bottom might fall out of her candidacy if she has to campaign from
jail!

The Statement from the ODNI and State Dept IGs is posted
above and below I’ve also posted the ODNI IG 23 July 15 Memo to the chairmen and
ranking minority-party members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees which
complains that his "request for State to give the intelligence community a copy
of all the e-mails had been rejected …." Hopefully the IGs can now obtain all the emails from the FBI.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

During a 7 July 2015 CNN interview Former secretary of state and
presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton made this ridiculously BOGUS and
untruthful accretion that:

“Everything
I did was permitted. There was no law. There was no regulation. There was
nothing that did not give me the full authority to decide how I was going to
communicate. Previous secretaries of state have said they did the same thing….
Everything I did was permitted by law and regulation. I had one device. When I
mailed anybody in the government, it would go into the government system.”

Hillary’s
BS accretion was so outlandish that it prompted Glenn Kessler, the Washington
Post Fact Checker, to “examine” the veracity of her claim about her “e-mail
practices,” which led him to conclude that it reminded him of then-Vice
President Al Gore’s statement in 1997 that there was “no controlling legal
authority” concerning his phone calls from the White House seeking Democratic
campaign contributions.Hillary claimed
that “everything I did was permitted” because “there was no law … there was no
regulation.” but the WaPo Fact Checker doubted that.

When
Hillary was secretary of state there were already in place State Department
rules on how to handle e-mails and whether to use a personal e-mail
account.Hillary said that other secretaries
“did the same thing” which was untrue because only Colin L. Powell sent e-mails
from a personal account and NO previous secretary had gone so far to conceal
their official communications as to set up an exclusive and private e-mail
server in the basement of their personal residence to handle all of their
departmental communications.

In
2009, eight months after Clinton became secretary of state the rules on
handling electronic records were clarified in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations
(CFR) update which stated: “Agencies that allow employees to send and receive
official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency
must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved
in the appropriate agency record-keeping system… The responsibility for making
and preserving the records is assigned to the head of each federal agency.”

As
a result of this CFR update, Secretary Clinton sent out a personal cable under
her own signature warning employees to “avoid conducting official Department
business from your personal e-mail accounts.”Too bad Hillary didn’t follow her own warning but was her actions were in
keeping with her “do as I say, not as I do” and “rules don’t apply to me” philosophy.

What
is indisputable is that Hillary flaunted the spirit of the laws and rules in
place at the time she was in office. Although she suggests that “when I mailed
anybody in the government, it would go into the government system” and so that
signified compliance with the requirement to maintain federal records, is bogus
in so many ways.Not only did her
practice make it difficult to locate records in response to specific
requests as her e-mail would be in another official’s inbox and would not exist
in the federal system as part of Clinton’s outbox, but because most of her
close inner circle communicated exclusively on her private Clintonmail.com
email system, those official communications never even entered the government
system. An official’s government outbox
would be the first place that people seeking records would look and recall that
the State Department contacted Clinton, seeking copies of her e-mails,
precisely because officials were unable to locate e-mails in response to
queries from a House committee investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks in
Benghazi, Libya.

One
other important detail missed by the WaPo Fact Checker which might have
persuaded him to award Hillary that coveted 4th Pinocchio was that when several
of the emails Hillary eventually did turn over (under duress) were compared
with ones obtained from other sources it was noticed that she had altered several
of her emails to edit out passages that she probably felt would be unflattering
to her. I suspect one the real reason she provided hard copies rather than the
electronic files, in addition to the hard copies were much harder to review, was
that experts would have been able to detect her edits from the electronic
versions. I would add that altering "official records" is a federal
offense but I’m confident that Obama's Dept of Justice would never pursue a
Democrat for a violation of Federal Law.

Before
Hillary even joined the Obama administration — the Foreign Affairs Manual made
it clear that before a senior official (such as a Senate-confirmed presidential
appointee) departed government service, he or she must prepare an inventory of
personal papers that are proposed for removal. The manual states that
“correspondence or e-mail received or sent in an employee’s capacity as a
Department official is not personal.”Hillary certainly failed to live up to that requirement, as she had retained
those e-mail records for nearly two years after she left office before returning
them to the State Department.

Hence,
when Hillary’s campaign erroneously suggests she could determine what actually
was a federal record, her State Department-related emails were obviously
official records and it would be disingenuous for anyone to argue otherwise.

So
how did the WaPo Fact Checker conclude Hillary’s whopper was only worthy of
three Pinocchios?He found that she had argued
her case on narrow, technical grounds, but had not actually complied with
existing rules as virtually everyone else understood them.Her decision to use a private e-mail system
for official business was highly unusual and flouted State Department
procedures and while she claimed “everything I did was permitted,” she certainly
DID NOT comply with the requirement to turn over her business-related e-mails
before she left government service. That’s a major failure that she continues
to lie about.The Fact Checker concluded
Hillary went too far in suggesting her actions were ordinary – -and she stretched
the limits of existing laws and regulations.

Although the WaPo Fact Checker
Awarded only 3 Pinocchios

Given he failed to recognize
Hillary had gone so far as to edit and alter some of the emails she eventually
did turn over thus falsifying them, this should have justified award of that
coveted 4th Pinocchio.

One final observation
concerning Hillary’s emails, the Intelligence Community professionals are
confident that the Chinese and Russian government cyber professionals
thoroughly compromised Hillary's home-grown server in the basement of her New
York house. They are also confident that at least three other governments
successfully hacker her. Not only was her clintonemail.com domain name a little
obvious but they were also tracking all her key subordinates that also exclusively
used their clintonemail.com accounts to communicated with her through her private
server. I suspect one of the reasons she did not want to turn over her server
was because US
government cyber forensic professionals would have verified the compromise.

Maybe Congress should subpoena the Chinese and Russians for Hillary’s emails
including the 30,000 missing ones? This might even reveal what the ones she
turned over actually contained before her minions edited them!

For those of you interested in reading the WaPo Fact Checkers 9 July 2015 article, here it is:

Mr. President, Who YOU Appoint to Be the Next Secretary of
the Army Clearly Demonstrates if YOU Truly Care about the Army and Our
Soldiers and by appointing someone who has never served in uniform like Eric Fanning you are clearly sending the message that you don't! The current Army Secretary John McHugh never served in uniform
and it has shown.His seven years as
secretary have been marked by reduced morale, increased suicides, declining
readiness and a hollowing of the force not seen since the Carter Administration. He had no clue what it meant to be a Soldier

Now Mr. President, you are once again showing the
Military exactly how little you care about us by nominating this Political Hack Fanning to replace McHugh who says he intends to leave by 1 November. Fanning also has never donned a uniform in defense of
this Nation and is definitely NOT what we need as our next Secretary.Granted he is a seasoned community organizer
having been a leader of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund helping Democrats
get elected but that hardly qualifies him to lead our Nation’s Army.The next few years promise to be challenging
as the Army deals with considerable force reductions and refitting from over a
decade of War so the next Secretary needs to be able to hit the ground running
with a deep understanding of not only how the Army runs but also has the deep
respect of serving members, something a non-Vet cannot possible have.Granted, Fanning will only be a
"caretaker" as by the time he is confirmed, if he is confirmed, there
will be less than a year left of your Administration so the harm he can do
is limited but it will be a crucial period as the Army faces the most severe
troop draw down since the end of the Vietnam War. The best possible outcome would probably be that Fanning is not confirmed by the Senate and either you appoint someone better suited and qualified for the job or that again, the Army Chief of Staff fill both roles until the end of your term.

As the son of a career military man, birthed by a military
doctor and the first time I moved off a military base was when I got drafted, I
thought I knew all there was to know about the military.To my surprise, I learned more about what it
meant to be a Soldier during my first 24 hours IN the military then I did being
AROUND the military for my first 19 years!

With this experience, I have to ask you Mr. President to find
someone who has donned a uniform in defense of this Nation to be our next Secretary
of the Army, to lead our Army that has endured over a decade of sustained combat.

In my opinion there are several former Soldiers that meet that
criterion but none better qualified than former Army Chief of Staff and current
President & CEO of the Association of the US Army (AUSA), Retired General
Gordon R. Sullivan.Although 77 years
old, the General is in excellent health and as AUSA president is intimately familiar
with all the challenges facing the service and has been a fierce advocate for Soldiers.A two tour Vietnam Vet with multiple other tours in Europe and Korea, he has
never been political although In August 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed
him Acting Secretary of the Army while he continued to serve as Army Chief of
Staff so he has previous experience in the job.

Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has also never served in
uniform and unfortunately it also shows by his seemingly indifference to personnel issues but at least he did have seven years in the Department of Defense prior to his
nomination as SECDEF and he was smart enough to get retired Marine Colonel Bob
Work, a combat veteran with over 27 years of active duty, to be his Deputy. Work
also had four years as Under Secretary of the Navy.Thankfully, ex-Soldier and former Congressman Patrick Murphy might be the Under Secretary for whomever is selected to be the new secretary. Murphy spent four years on active duty as an Army JAG and served a tour as a staff attorney in Baghdad. Although not a Combat officer, at least he has experience as a Soldier.

With all this said, Political Hack Eric Fanning is definitely NOT what we need as our next Secretary.Granted his community organizer background might give him excellent political skills but it hardly qualifies him to lead our Nation’s Army in the
final year of the Obama Administration.As I said, the next few years promise to be challenging
as the Army deals with considerable force reductions and refitting from a
decade of War so the next Secretary needs
to be able to hit the ground running with a deep understanding of not only how
the Army runs but also has the deep respect of serving members -- Someone like
General Sullivan. Granted, the next secretary will really be a "caretaker" only serving for the remaining months of the Obama Administration but it will be a crucial period as the Army faces the most severe troop draw down since the end of the Vietnam War.

Mr. President, this is another opportunity for you to secure
your legacy.Are you going to saddle the
Army with a political hack who knows nothing about the Army, strategically,
tactically or culturally, for your final time in office or will you appoint a “Gordon
Sullivan” type that actually can do something to rebuild the Army after a
decade of War.This is your chance to
demonstrate you really care about Soldiers and match your rhetoric with
actions.Appoint Gordon Sullivan NOW!